In
the village of Heuersdorf, an American flag was flown for years upside down, referring to the signal of dire distress in
instances of extreme danger to property according to the flag code of the United States of America,
the homeland of the owners of the MIBRAG mining corporation until 2009: NRG Energy, Inc. and URS Corporation.

MIBRAG
has evicted the villagers in order to extract some 52 million tons of lignite from the
United Schleenhain Mine for a power plant at
Lippendorf, near Leipzig
(about 200 kilometers south of Berlin). The earthmoving task inherent to mining is equivalent to excavating the original Suez Canal (74 million cubic meters 1859 - 69) more than twenty times. Fundamental questions on the ecological impact of the project have yet to be resolved.

Ther were once more than 40 registered historic structures in Heuersdorf, including two magnificent churches. The
Emmaus Church dates back to the 12th Century and is thought to be the oldest fortified church in Saxony. The
Tabor Church was built after 1866 on the site of an earlier church that probably dated to the 14th Century. After part of the neighboring village of Ramsdorf had been burned down during the Hussite Wars, a stately farm house belonging to a local knight was transported to Heuersdorf. It was erected in the southern part of the community known at that time as Hermsdorff maior. Heuersdorf and Großhermsdorf, the subsequent name of the southern settlement, were pillaged during the Thirty Years War in 1632.

The
farm houses, some over 300 years old, document changing patterns of agricultural practice. Before its destruction, Heuersdorf contained a number of traditional three-sided farmyards with housing, barn, and stables. Most prominent has been the building ensemble ascribed to nobility of the late Middle Ages. The stately manor house that now serves as the town hall was erected the 19th Century by the village's largest landowner. The most recent structures had been built after World War II in the course of farm collectivization. Heuersdorf was thus a unique architectural monument spanning eight centuries of German history. Yet many
unoccupied homes were already suffering from disuse before the evacuation of the community.

The endangered status of Heuersdorf is treated in the article Historic Heuersdorf, appearing in the compendium Heritage At Risk 2004/2005 of the
International Council on Monuments and Sites. Despite stringent German laws on the protection of historic monuments and sites, all buildings in Heuersdorf have been victimized by mining excavation. While the venerable Emmaus Church has been moved to the city of Borna, all other buildings were torn down.

The villagers were forced to accept
financial assistance offered by MIBRAG to move from Heuersdorf, since they did not have the monetary resources for resisting the evacuation by legal means. For many years, younger adults refused such enticements to leave
their homeland. They were raising families and wanted to preserve the village and its community values. However, any further refusal to give up their homes would now lead to forced eviction and unendurable financial losses. Contrary to the declared intention of the state government of Saxony to keep the village community intact, people from Heuersdorf have been resettled at more than a dozen different locations. The singular interest of MIBRAG over the years was directed at coercing individual families out of the village, eroding human bonds and heightening the insecurity of those inhabitants remaining.

Since June 2009, Heuersdorf has been completely depopulated. Yet its struggle to resist this fate was unparalleled in German history.

Heuersdorf succeeded in overturning a parliamentary act intended to destroy the village on July 14, 2000. The Heuersdorf Law (Heuersdorf-Gesetz), which had been passed by the Parliament of Saxony in 1998 to achieve compulsory resettlement in accordance with the Federal Mining Law (Berggesetz) , was declared invalid by the Supreme Constitutional Court of Saxony. Many mining regulations were instituted in the 1930's to enable the appropriation of private property as a wartime expedient. Similar laws continued to be employed in both parts of the divided Germany after 1945, imposing involuntary eviction on thousands of households in the path of lignite mining. Although theselegal provisions are still in force, the Federal Constitution prescribes a specific parliamentary act (such as the Heuersdorf Law) for dissolving any community refusing resettlement.

On November 12, 2003, the Supreme Administrative Court of Saxony likewise declared the Lignite Plan for the United Schleenhain Mine to be invalid on formal grounds. Heuersdorf had thus won a second legal victory against government and mining interests.

Arguing that the regional economy was critically dependent on the lignite beneath Heuersdorf, the State Assembly of Saxony (Landtag) passed a second Heuersdorf Law on April 22, 2004 for eliminating the village. The lignite reserves in question actually constitute only about three percent of the total tonnage already licensed for mining in the region. A lawsuit filed by the Heuersdorf Town Council to contest the law was rejected by the Constitutional Court on November 25, 2005. The community was irrevocably deprived of its administrative authority and incorporated into the neighboring city of Regis-Breitingen.

You can find out more about the situation in
the village by downloading the Brief Facts document, reading the information below, and talking with our
international supporters.

To
travel to the former site of Heuersdorf, see the route
planner page, which also contains maps
of the village and the region.